Mother Emanuel

Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church

By: Kevin Sack

Narrated by: William DeMeritt

A sweeping history of one of the nation’s most important African American churches and a profound story of courage and grace amid the fight for racial justice—from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kevin Sack

Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight worshippers. Although the shooter had targeted the first AME church in the South in order to agitate racial strife, he did not anticipate the aftermath—an outpouring of forgiveness from the victims’ families and a reckoning with the divisions of caste that have afflicted Charleston and the South since the earliest days of European settlement.

Mother Emanuel explores the fascinating history that brought the church to that moment, and the depth of the desecration committed in its fellowship hall. It reveals how African Methodism was cultivated from the harshest American soil and how Black suffering shaped forgiveness into both a religious practice and a survival tool. Kevin Sack, who has written about race in his native South for more than four decades, uses the church to trace the long arc of Black life in the city where nearly half of enslaved Africans disembarked in North America and where the Civil War began. Through the microcosm of one congregation, he explores the development of a unique practice of Christianity, from its daring breakaway from white churches in 1817, through the traumas of Civil War and Reconstruction, to its critical role in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. We meet unsung heroes, including Denmark Vesey, the former slave whose aborted rebellion plot led to his hanging and the destruction of the original church; Rev. Richard Harvey Cain, Emanuel’s first pastor after the Civil War, who also won election to Congress during Reconstruction; Rev. Benjamin J. Glover, who served simultaneously as pastor and a crusading NAACP leader during the 1960s; and Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a respected state legislator, whose 2015 murder inspired President Barack Obama’s memorable “Amazing Grace” eulogy.

At its core, Mother Emanuel is an epic tale of perseverance, not just of a congregation but of a people who withstood enslavement and Jim Crow and all manner of violence with an unbending faith.

©2025 Kevin Sack (P)2025 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“All at once Kevin Sack’s Mother Emanuel is harrowing, despairing and inspiring. From a moment-by-moment account of the evening of the massacre to a final, brilliant discussion of the meaning of forgiveness in Christianity and other traditions, Sack writes lyrically, from deep research, and with an unforgettable message about tragedy and resilience not only in that horrible summer of 2015 but over 200 years of this famous church. . . . Mother Emanuel still lives, perhaps stronger than ever on Calhoun Street, an institution no variation on the Confederacy can ever kill.”—David W. Blight, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

“[Mother Emanuel is a] searching history of the Charleston church brought into the headlines by mass murder . . . A sobering, expertly told history of the struggle for equality as waged from pulpit and pew.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Big in historical scale but granular in personal detail, Mother Emanuel transcends the church of its title and the crime that made it famous. It feels like a monument to Black America that takes the form of a book.”—Edward Ball, National Book Award winning author of Slaves in the Family and author of Life of a Klansman